The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime (Adam Ruins Everything)

First, where is the data? Second, yeah, it's bananas to test large, fast, heavy robots on public streets. The only reason we let it happen is because the robots look like cars. Third, it's bananas to have large, fast, heavy vehicles everywhere mixed in with all the other traffic. The only reason we let it happen is a mass-marketing campaign (see "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime" (Adam Ruins Everything) ▶ this video ) Here is a film "a Trip down Market Street" recorded in San Francisco on April 14, 1906, just before the Great Earthquake. The source of the problem is clear: cars accelerate much faster than horses. [link]

in “S.F. says incidents by Cruise, Waymo driverless taxis are ‘skyrocketing.’” · View on HN

I just want to take a moment to remind everybody just how insane car travel is as a mode of transportation. Sure, it's convenient , but at what cost!? Air pollution, tire particle pollution, covering the Earth with asphalt, etc. Also, and this is gruesome so brace yourself, car travel causes incredible amounts of human suffering. Car collisions cause something like 40,000 fatalities per year just in the USA. In fact, more Americans have died in car crashes than in all the wars we've fought. I call it the "Mayhem Lottery". Anyone can play, little kids, old people, pregnant women, everybody. And the tickets cost nothing, all you have to do is be near a street. (Sometimes cars will even crash into buildings. People have been killed by cars while sitting in their own homes watching TV!) Now the weird, bizarre thing about this state of affairs is that it is the result of a successful mass-marketing campaign! When cars were first introduced people complained of reckless drivers ("Speed Demons"), the car companies and the government got together and created a deliberate plan to change public attitude (about being run down in the street by car drivers), they actually coined the term "jaywalker" to describe people using the street in the traditional fashion (pedestrians.) It sounds nuts, because it is, yet it really happened: cf. "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime" (Adam Ruins Everything) ▶ this video - - - - Edit to add: You can see the trasition period in the "a Trip down Market Stre

in “How to Survive a Car Crash in 10 Easy Steps” · View on HN

If it helps, it's the result of a deliberate domestic propaganda campaign. I usually point to "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime" (Adam Ruins Everything) ▶ this video for the story. We can see what traffic was like just as motorized carriages began to mix with pedestrians and horses. Here is "San Francisco, a Trip down Market Street, April 14, 1906" upscaled and colorized: [link] You can see that, at low speeds and modest density, carriages and pedestrians flow together just fine. Although I'm sure there were still lots of accidents, everyone is more-or-less sharing the space. You can already see the problem brewing: horseless carriages can accelerate much faster than horse-drawn carriages.

in “Too many Americans live in places built for cars – not for human connection” · View on HN

Car drivers and passengers should wear helmets. Car travel is the most dangerous thing most people do regularly. It's only normalized due to a deliberate campaign of domestic propaganda: "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime (Adam Ruins Everything)" ▶ this video

in “Pedal Me bans staff riders from wearing helmets for safety reasons” · View on HN

> I'll take an unfatigable, indistractable, computer that literally has eyes in the back of its head, and on the side of its head, and the front, and can bounce radar under cars, etc over the pitiful example of a "safe (human) driver" we have now. Yes, friend, and when we have those so will I. Those (as yet still fictional) robot cars (and can we PLEASE call them "auto-autos"!?) are not the problem. - - - - > Drunk drivers are killers. People that text and drive are killers. ... Yes, and it's arguably fucking crazy that we let them do that. The whole reason is a deliberate campaign to normalize the carnage: "speed demons" were replaced by "jay walkers" and now more people (in the USA) have been killed by cars than by all the wars we've fought. "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime (Adam Ruins Everything)" ▶ this video Anyhow, "people kill people so my robots should be allowed to kill people too." Is not a valid argument IMO.

in “San Francisco cops pull over a Cruise driverless car for no lights on” · View on HN

This is something I ponder pretty often, and I think the best you can say is that there are causal loops . Certainly, planned media campaigns seem to cause (in some but not all cases) large shifts in mass behavior. (E.g. Bernays getting women to smoke cigarettes[1], or pedestrians being removed from the streets to make way for automobiles by deriding them as "jaywalkers" and then criminalizing the until-then ancient and universal custom[2].) On the other hand, as much as I don't like to "blame the user" I can't help but feel like we have personal responsibility for our behavior. E.g. on the individual level it feel to me like a "cop out" to say, e.g. advertising made me eat this junk food and get fat (or whatever.) In any event, if you want to study this sort of thing using formal symbolic systems, you have to use systems that can handle causal loops, i.e. Cybernetics: [link] [1] I view Edward Bernays as a mass murderer for his largely successful efforts in this regard: [link] [link] [2] The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime (Adam Ruins Everything) ▶ this video

in “Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]” · View on HN

In this case it was a giant open conspiracy. It wasn't secret. > a bunch of moustache-twirling executives sat in a board room figuring out how to force cars on people is a bit much. That's pretty much exactly what happened. I don't know that they twirled their mustaches though, I'm sure they all thought they were doing the right thing. "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime" (Adam Ruins Everything) ▶ this video It was a classic case of "seemed like a good idea at the time". > Sure, that has lead to some problems we're going to have to correct, That's pretty facile. For one thing more people (in the USA) have died directly from cars crashes than from all the wars we've fought. For another there's the pollution: exhaust is deadly poisonous, tires wear down and shed millions of tons of tiny particles of vulcanized rubber into the environment, the fuel we burn contributes to the Greenhouse Effect, the asphalt of the roads is toxic, and there are so many roads and so much pavement that it affects planetary albedo. Then there are the unquantifiable changes to the social order: streets used to be public ways for everyone, now they are the domain of the automobile and people are confined to the sidewalks for fear of mayhem and death. I could go on and on. I think if an alien landed here and looked around one of it's first reactions would be, "WTF is up with all these cars!?"

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I've said this before, so apologies to those who've heard it already, but I believe testing big fast robots in public is irresponsible. These machines have already killed people. We know that human drivers kill and maim tens of thousands of people every year, so it's pretty obvious that robotic drivers will do so too, unless and until they become better drivers than humans. If somebody wanted to let their killer robots move around in public with limited supervision it would be obviously illegal, but somehow dressing up as cars falls into a weird blind spot. I've encountered at least two major objections: > Human drivers kill people so it's okay if robot drivers do too. But is it really okay for human drivers to kill people? Our complacency in the face of automotive mayhem is the result of a deliberate campaign of social engineering: "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime" (Adam Ruins Everything) ▶ this video We went from decrying "speed demons" (reckless drivers who hit pedestrians) to victim-blaming "jaywalkers". Now, for example, more Americans have been killed by cars than by all the wars we've fought. (And that's just counting collisions, not deaths from air pollution, etc.) > The machines will eventually be safer than human drivers (a belief I share) but they need to practice in real world conditions to do it. So build a model city, populate it with people willing to take the risks, and test them there. (This is setting aside the additional idea of doing extensive modeling in

in “San Francisco raises Tesla 'self-driving' safety concerns as public test nears” · View on HN

The grim joke among cyclists is, "If you want to get away with killing someone just be sure they are riding a bike and you're driving a car." Paraphrasing, if you want to get away with killing someone with your massive, high-velocity robots just be sure to make them look like cars (and maybe put a human "test driver" in there as a kind of moral "crumple zone" to deflect blame. They don't even have to be good at their job. In fact, it works out better if they're watching TV on their phone when your robot kills someone.) Automotive death and mayhem was normalized in the USA by a deliberate campaign of domestic propaganda: "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime" (Adam Ruins Everything) ▶ this video Since then cars have killed more Americans than all the wars we've fought. A self-driving golf cart that cannot go fast enough to hurt people could be built and deployed safely today. Fast heavy car-shaped robots are a fetish. Please, snap out of it before your robots kill. Again. (Also, can we please call self-driving cars auto-autos? Please?)

in “Expanding our testing in San Francisco” · View on HN

I've heard that, I don't buy it. I think we are just stupid and crazy. Biodegradable plastic has been a thing for over half a century yet the whole planet is choking on discarded plastic. Where's the sane reason for that? Cars! Cars aren't sane, we had to convince ourselves that they were though a deliberate campaign of domestic propaganda![1] Cars kill hella people (I don't have stats for the rest of the world but more Americans have been killed by cars than have died in all the wars we've fought!) And that's just the people that get hit. There's air pollution (car exhaust is a deadly poison) and tires are constantly wearing down and giving off vulcanized rubber particles. I won't deny their convenience, but you'll never convince we they're sane . Or my old pet peeve: refrigerators. They open like cabinets instead of like drawers. The cold air goes out, the warm air goes in, and you get to pay for the energy to cool it off. Why not make them like a chest of drawers? Sanity? I think not. [1] "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime" (Adam Ruins Everything) ▶ this video ) Replying here to the other fella: > The vaneless ion generator is >5x less efficient. C'mon, less efficient by what metrics? Total cost over the lifetime of the structure, including maintenance? Killing eagles? In re: Molten Salt reactors there's a old page[1] about Molten Salt tech in general that talks about reactors towards the end: > The second MSR was a civilian power plant prototype, the Molten Salt Reactor Ex

in “Why isn't differential dataflow more popular?” · View on HN

So your suspicions are partially verifiable. The automobile industry did buy laws (and the LA subway-trolley system) to favor cars in America. ▶ this video [link] [link] Apparently LA's loss of underground subway was tied to its loss of overland subway, as well. They seem to have been the same system?

in “Sharrows, the bicycle infrastructure that doesn’t work and nobody wants” · View on HN

> I am now convinced that the more appropriate question may be “Are our streets safe?” Ya think? It's insane to mix car traffic and people. It was deliberately normalized by a systematic campaign of propaganda. (This is true, it really happened: "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime" (Adam Ruins Everything) ▶ this video ) We went from "speed demons" to "jay walkers". Fast-forward several decades and more Americans have died from cars than from wars. (The rest of the world also has horrific death rates from cars but more time of war.) > These clips make the civil engineer in me cringe. As well they should. We're looking at a system that is, inadvertently but fundamentally, designed to kill people. > One potential solution is to add a bike box to increase visibility of cyclists and scooterists. And that's the Stockholm Syndrome, if you will, causing cognitive dissonance leading to blatantly illogical statements from otherwise sane and intelligent people. Anthropologists point out that every society succeeds at getting it's children to act like it's adults. Part of this is the normalization of whatever weird stuff your society/culture has going on. I'm reminded of what the New Guinea man said the missionary, "If God didn't want us to eat people He wouldn't have made them out of meat." Putting car and non-car traffic on the same road is our cannibalism. "Once you see it..."

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If you stop a moment and think carefully, you'll realize that normal car drivers should wear helmets, and passengers too. It's just that piloting multi-ton metal vehicles at bone-shattering velocities has been normalized. It's always been insane and deadly, but there was an actual concerted effort to normalize it and that worked. I'm not even joking. "Speed demons" were replaced by "Jay walkers" and people have been getting maimed and killed ever since. "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime" (Adam Ruins Everything) ▶ this video

in “E-bikes could be the electric revolution cities need” · View on HN

I too don't like the article presented that way. I should note that it was a conspiracy in this case. Automobile manufacturers ran media campaigns and lobbied to make walking across the street a crime. ▶ this video Most of these are also laws passed by groups of people deciding to control others for a mix of perceived altruistic and selfish reasons. It's not secret but there's people conspiring.

in “Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives” · View on HN